Description

Based on the true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, The Sorrow of War is revered as the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front for our era’.

Kien’s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well – this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war.

‘A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful agonising love story… a magnificent achievement’ Independent

TRANSLATED BY FRANK PALMOS AND PHAN THANH HAO

This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war – each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Publisher Review

The Sorrow of War vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam war to take its place alongside the greatest war novel of the century, All Quiet on the Western Front. And this is to understate its qualities for, unlike All Quiet, it is a novel abut much more than war. A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful agonising love story… a magnificent achievement This hauntingly beautiful novel, written by a North Vietnamese Army veteran, manages to humanise completely a people who up until now have usually been cast as robotic fanatics Unputdownable… This book should be required reading for anyone in American politics or policy-making. It should win the Pulitzer Prize, but it won’t. It’s too gripping for that